Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Business Rusch: The Death of Publishing

WRITTEN BY: KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH - FEB• 28•13

It is the last day of February, 2013, and
by now, traditional publishing should have mailed its holiday cards with the
gleeful misquote attributed to Mark Twain on the cards’ interior: The
reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

Not that there were actual news reports of
the death of traditional publishing. But if you read the blogosphere in 2010
and 2011, a wide number of reputable publishing industry insiders predicted
that traditional publishing would be dead or unrecognizable by the end of the
Mayan Calendar on 12/21/12.

I’m serious. And I’m not sourcing the
predictions for fear of embarrassing some good friends.

Those of us who understand how the large
industry that is publishing works, and how business works in general knew that
those predictions were misguided to say the least. A number of the folks who
predicted such things stopped when it became clear that the e-publishing
revolution wasn’t storming the barricades of traditional publishing. Like most
revolutionaries, e-publishing grew older and got subsumed into the traditional
system. And those who felt the revolution’s initial passion and fire have
either given up proselytizing, settled into the daily grind that a real work
brings, or have given up the cause altogether.

Where is traditional publishing four-plus
years into the revolution? Bigger, stronger, and richer than ever. Who ended up
getting harmed by the revolution itself? Writers who never really learned how
the business worked and/or writers who believed their traditional publishing
careers were bulletproof, that these crazy changes in the delivery method
wouldn’t touch them.

Even now, these formerly bulletproof
writers have no idea what happened to them. They blame traditional publishing,
rather than their own business acumen.

The writing was on the wall as much as
four years ago, when the recession hit. Book advances worldwide went down
significantly, as much as three-quarters, according to an article in the London Times.
Writers continued to accept those advances and bemoan them, so as the
e-publishing revolution hit and publishers started to realize they could make more
money than they ever had, they kept the advances low. Why put out a
ton of money up front if authors will accept less?

It’s excellent business. Minimize your
up-front costs. Think about it. Would you pay in advance for something if you
could get the same (or better) product for less money, money paid out made six
months after you’ve already profited from that product? You’d do the latter, of
course. And many traditional publishers are doing the same. Pay less, pay lower
royalties, get the same product for one-quarter the cost. Makes tremendous
business sense to me.

for the rest go here:http://kriswrites.com/2013/02/28/the-business-rusch-the-death-of-publishing/

Ed Gorman has the same infallible readability as writers like Lawrence Block, Max Allan Collins, Donald E. Westlake, Ed McBain, and John D. MacDonald. His political consultant sleuth Dev Conrad, introduced during the last Presidential election year in SLEEPING DOGS, returned last year in STRANGLEHOLD. BLINDSIDE, the third novel in the series, is the best yet, combining a trickily plotted mystery, narrative wit, and appropriately cynical political satire. While it's clear which side Dev and his creator are on, they balance the scales somewhat by making the "good guy" candidate as despicable in his way as his opponent. The jaded operative notes of his candidate, "I was in no position to judge him morally. I was in a perfect position to judge him professionally." Observers of various ideological stripes might share Gorman's underlying regret at the dysfunctional state of American politics in the 21st Century. Dev Conrad's final dramatic act is a gesture toward restoring hope, a possibility that always hovers on the edge of vision even in the author's most downbeat fiction.

Monday, February 25, 2013

Saturday, February 23, 2013

FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 2009

Doug Clegg - Outlining

In Graham Greene's stingy faux-autobiography Ways of Escape (stingy because he tells us so little about his personal life) he remarks that only in the second half of his long career did he begin to outline his novels before writing them. Outlining helped him, he felt, and wished he'd done it from the beginning.

That most excellent writer Doug Clegg wrote a lengthy letter about outlining on Shocklines last night. Since I've always been unable (or maybe unwilling) to outline I found his take on the subject fascinating. I want to thank Doug for letting me reprint it here.

* * * *

Bio: Douglas Clegg is the author of more than 25 books, including the upcoming (fall 2009) hardcover, Isis, as well as the email serial The Locust, coming out in the summer of 2009. Check his website at DouglasClegg.com for details. He was born in Virginia and currently lives at the beach in New England.

* * *

I used to hate outlining. I felt I was storytelling in the outline, and I'd get bored with it and would never want to write the book. So, for most of my novels, the only outline was the first draft itself. This meant I had a 300-700 page "outline" depending on how that first draft went.

Then, I had to edit it down and cut it like crazy until I found the structure.

However, in the past couple of years, in the studies I've been doing of the architecture of the idea of story and what makes a powerful tale. I think there's another way to look at the outline in terms of a functional scaffolding for the writer's work.

I now believe structure is the most important element in a novel and a story.

I don't believe a writer with undeveloped abilities as a writer can necessarily write a great story or novel. But when the structure is sound in a story, even with so-so writing, a novel or story can be successful. With great writing, it stands a chance of becoming a classic -- either of its time, or a later time.

I have no influence over how "talented" I am. But I do have influence over the technique and craft of story creation.

In the past several years, I've begun studying story architecture -- and structuring what I write far ahead of the writing itself.

If the structure is interesting and exciting enough for me, there's no boredom in the writing of the tale.

The structure begins with a premise. The premise comes from the writer's judgment on some aspect of human nature and the human condition.

From this, I can start to ask questions about where would this story take place, who are the people who most exemplify aspects of this story who will conflict with each other, where am "I" in the story (in other words, how is this a story that I must write, rather than someone else? Otherwise I'm practicing "applied storytelling techniques," and, as a writer, that doesn't interest me. It must come from something important enough to me, specifically, to put it on the page.)

There are other hurdles in creating the structure of the story. Sometimes at the end of a story -- when it's all done and has worked -- I realize the premise itself was something other than I had planned. I love it when that happens -- it reveals to me something about why I write stories.

I used to get hung up on the idea of outlines as being close to what I learned in school about outlining. And to me, that was a homework assignment. I hate homework.

Instead, in structuring the novel and working out the problems of its creation before I begin the majority of the writing, I gain a greater freedom in ordering the scenes, knowing what scenes absolutely have to be there, knowing which characters need further development, etc.

When the structure is in place, I can approach scenes with a freedom to move them, change them, adjust them without hurting the structure of the story itself. Sort of like the game of Jenga -- once it's in place, you can pull out pieces, etc., but there are usually certain blocks of the story that absolutely must remain where they are for the strength of the story to hold.

Why would I do this after publishing more than 24 books in the past 20 years? Because for every good novel I produced, I felt there were two that didn't work the way I wanted them to work. And the problem was in those novels' structures. I'll never let that happen again.

Now there's something to be said for those stories that are so based on a sudden hit of inspiration that they come alive because, organically, the story structure exists without the writer having to outline.

If a writer has that, more power to him or her. But I've reached a point with writing where I never again want to look at a novel of mine published and think: if I had taken four more months and restructured that story, it would have been unforgettable.

My goal is to write a story before I die where any reader who picks it up will forget they read the story and instead, feel they lived it. Not there yet. May never make the goal. But working on the structure of a story well in-advance of writing it -- for me -- seems to work.

This is just me. You may have a different approach to writing fiction that works beautifully for you.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

When they say, "They don't make 'em like that anymore," this is what they're talking about. "How the West Was Won," released in America 50 years ago this week (on February 20, 1963) was probably the most ambitious western ever made, an epic saga spanning four generations, 50 years, two-and-a-half hours, five vignettes, three directors (well, actually four), the widest possible screen, and an enormous cast of A-listers, including James Stewart, Debbie Reynolds, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, and Spencer Tracy. It's hard to imagine any movie, let alone a western, being made on such a grand scale today, when it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Naturally, in a production that massive, there was a lot of chaos behind the scenes. Even fans of the movie may not be aware of the off-camera feud between Peck and his director, the technical challenges imposed by the untried widescreen format, or the freak accident that crippled a stuntman. Read on for a round-up of little-known facts behind the MGM classic.

1. The initial source of the story of "How the West Was Won," which traced one pioneer family's role in the settlement of the West throughout the 19th century, was a photo essay of the same name in Life magazine.

2. Three directors are credited for the movie's five segments -- but there was a fourth, Richard Thorpe, who went uncredited for directing the transitional historical scenes between segments. Thorpe had done similar uncredited duty for the galley-slave scenes in MGM's "Ben-Hur" four years earlier.

3. The main directors were all veteran directors of westerns. Henry Hathaway helmed three of the segments ("The Rivers," "The Plains," and "The Outlaws"). Legendary director of westerns John Ford shot the segment "The Civil War," and George Marshall (who'd directed Stewart a quarter-century earlier in the western "Destry Rides Again") directed "The Railroads."

4. This was one of the first -- and one of the last -- Hollywood drama features shot in Cinerama. The IMAX of its day, Cinerama was an ultra-widescreen format used mostly for documentaries. It required three projectors running simultaneously and a screen that curved at the sides to show the entire image.

5. The three-strip Cinerama process resulted in vertical dividing lines visible in many shots (as generations who've watched the movie on TV can attest). Sometimes the filmmakers were able to hide the lines behind trees or poles, but it wasn't until the recent restoration and Blu-ray release that the lines were erased.

6. Another Cinerama issue: actors who, due to the curvature of the screen, appeared to be making eye contact from opposite sides of the frame seemed to be staring off in odd directions when the film was projected on flat screens. That, too, had to be corrected in the recent restoration.

7. Ford and Hathaway grumbled about shooting in Cinerama, with Ford complaining about the size of the sets they had to fill the frame with and Hathaway grousing that he couldn't get closer to the actors than a waist-up shot. The actors grumbled, too. "I found it impossible to act realistically in front of the giant machine with three lenses," said Gregory Peck, according to Lynn Haney's biography, "Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life."

8. In fact, there was no love lost between Peck and Hathaway. According to Haney, Peck said that, while he found Hathaway "a charming fellow at dinner," he was a tyrant on the set. "He just yelled and screamed and foamed at the mouth and chewed cigars all day long."

9. Henry Fonda said he felt "lost in such an overwhelming epic -- it's like I wasn't there."for the rest go here:http://news.moviefone.com/2013/02/20/how-the-west-was-won-50th-anniversary_n_2729137.html

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Bill Pronzini's novella Femme is one of the best written and most cleverly engineered private eye stories I've ever had the immense pleasure to read. The piece is original to the dazzling package Cemetery Dance has given both it and Kinsmen.

The "Femme" in the title is one Cory Beckett, so breathtakingly beautiful she can freeze you in your tracks. There are such women. Ostensibly she hires Nameless to find her bail-jumping brother Kenneth who is momentarily free after being charged with stealing an expensive necklace owned by her boss' wife.

But if you think that's what's really going on you're probably someone who thinks Karl Rove is a nice guy. Oh no. Nameless investigates but since Pronzini keeps turning the story back on itself (you have to read it to understand just how masterfully Pronzini constructs Femme) Nameless has to keep second guessing himself. This is a tale that belongs in The P.I. Hall of Fame.

I'm hoping Bill eventually turns this into a novel. I've rarely seen sex more convincingly portrayed as a deadly weapon.

Bill Pronzini has a special gift for portraying the ominous underbelly of America, the troubled and dangerous people who want to destroy our political system. Call them what you will--Klan, Birchers, Tea Baggers--they hope to undermine the aspirations of average Americans by suggesting that violent overthrow may someday be the only answer.

In the meantime, well short of that grandiose scheme, they pick on people who give them offense. Here Nameless is hired by a mother whose college student daughter has vanished along with her black boy friend. Given the nature of the Kinsmen, a far-right group that has many in the area of the college living in fear of speaking up, Nameless has reason to be worried about their fate.

The terror here never lets go. And Pronzini's skill at dramatizing the effects of violence on average people has never been more startling. Though I'd read this a few times after it was originally published in the 90s, this time through I was seized by it. Present day America is far scarier than it was when Kinsman was first published.

The Presidency of Barack Obama has brought out the kind of racism not seen since the early 1960s. Kinsman is a belated wake-up call.

Crime Writer Patricia Cornwell Wins $50.9M Lawsuit

Author Patricia Cornwell was awarded $50.9 million on Tuesday in a federal lawsuit against her former financial manager, according to court documents obtained by TheWrap.

Cornwell, whose best-selling series of crime novels stars the medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, sued Anchin, Block & Anchin LLP and its former principal, Evan Snapper, in 2009 for negligence and breach of contract.

A U.S. district court jury in Massachusetts on Tuesday ruled unanimously that the financial firm cost Cornwell and her company millions of dollars in losses and unaccounted revenue.

Lawyers for the New York firm said no money was missing from Cornwell's accounts and blamed losses on the economic recession and on what they considered the author's extravagant lifestyle, which included a $40,000 per month apartment in New York City and expensive cars and helicopters.

But Cornwell, 56, said Anchin began betting aggressively with her money and, in 2009, she found that her net worth was under $13 million, despite eight-figure earnings in each of the previous four years.

James Campbell, a Boston-based lawyer representing Anchin, did not respond to calls from TheWrap requesting comment.